Search for UCF’s next president has yielded 21 applicants so far

Nearly two dozen candidates — though only one currently the leader at another college or university — have applied to become the next president of the University of Central Florida, two months after the search began.

Among the applicants is the former president and CEO of a financially struggling museum in Washington, D.C., a cancer researcher and a self-proclaimed “Gold Medalist” computer scientist and engineer.

UCF is searching for a successor for President John Hitt, who is retiring after 26 years, and the Board of Trustees has said it expects to make a selection before Hitt’s last day on June 30.

The consultant hired to lead the UCF search has said repeatedly during public meetings the strongest candidates tend to surface toward the end of the application window. But the search committee hasn’t yet set an application deadline.

Trustee David Walsh, chair of

the search committee that will narrow the field of applicants, said Thursday that “we anticipate going into detail in respect to timelines and next steps” at the group’s next meeting at 10 a.m. Monday in the UCF Global Collaboration Room. He did not answer questions about why the group had not set a deadline or if he expected that to happen during the meeting.

Walsh said during a Jan. 10 meeting he expected the group to begin reviewing applications this month.

The 21 candidates who submitted applications through Jan. 29 include three women, five people who live in Florida, and three from outside the United States. Nobody working for UCF, nor anyone currently at any other four-year university in Florida, has applied for the position.

Laurie Wilder, president and CEO of Parker Executive Search, which is contacting potential candidates and collecting applications, has said during search committee meetings that most candidates hold off until the end of the search because they want to keep their names out of the public light for as long as possible.

“Our biggest concern from candidates right now is clearly the open process that is required in the state of Florida,” Wilder said during the Jan. 10 meeting. “That is clearly giving some individuals great pause. As we talk to sitting presidents, that is obviously a massive concern for them, and so we’re working

The 21 candidates who submitted applications include three women, five people who live in Florida, and three from outside the United States.

through that and we’re talking about how we go about creating a very transparent process, but also ensuring that we have the best pool of candidates.”

Wilder said her firm had contacted people in leadership positions at other institutions and the response had been “absolutely impressive.” Reached by email this week, she referred questions from the Sentinel to the university.

“We have a policy not to publicly discuss searches we are conducting,” she wrote.

Members of the Board of Trustees and the search committee have previously said they prefer candidates who have worked in academia for the post. At least eight candidates who have administrative experience at a college or university have applied.

One is Jeffrey Herbst, former president and CEO of the Newseum. He stepped down last August, as the Washington, D.C., museum focused on journalism started a financial review. Herbst was previously president of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., for five years. He declined to be interviewed for this story.

Other candidates include the founder of an organization focused on improving policing, the vice president of a South Florida plastic company and the associate chief of staff for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Jackson, Miss.

The only current college or university president who has applied for the UCF post is Amit Chakma, president of the University of Western Ontario, a public university with about 32,000 students in London, Canada. He also declined to speak with the Sentinel.

The other current college administrators who have applied are: Naser Abumustafa, dean of Al Zahra College for Women in Oman; Gary Alexander, executive director of Hellenic College in Brookline, Mass.; Rajendra Badgaiyan, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Richmond University Medical Center; Alexander Domijan, founding dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley; Francine Henderson Hollis, assessment coordinator for the department of food science and technology at the University of Tennessee; and Kimberly Riley, coordinator for the bachelors of science in applied management for the Ohio University system.

One K-12 school superintendent, Anne Garrett of the 7,000-student Haywood County district in North Carolina, also submitted an application.